Tuition to rise to $35k for ’13-’14

Traditional undergraduate tuition will be raised another 4.9 percent for the 2013-2014 academic year, University officials announced last month.

The Board of Trustees-approved tuition increase will bring the undergraduate cost to nearly $35,000 for the school year, excluding room and board.

“It is the minimum we need to do in order to generate enough revenue for the types of programs the university wants to implement going forward,” Vice Provost Homa Shabahang said.

The increase is about 1.6 percent lower than last year’s tuition increase, which was 6.5 percent.

“The University is a very tuition-dependent university. We do not have many other sources of revenue,” Provost Greg Dewey said.

“We look at what our population is,” Shabahang said. “We have information about the amount of tuition that our students can possibly afford to pay. We look at how much Cal grants and Pel grants are available to our students.

“We also look at what are the financial needs of the University and within that context we try to put the tuition as low as possible in order to make La Verne still a very good value for the education that we offer, and we offer one of the most generous financial aid packets in our peer group,” Shabahang said.

The University of La Verne’s has 25 so-called peer institutions, which include Chapman University, Azusa Pacific Uni­versity, Pepperdine University and Loyola Marymount University.

Space is a major issue that the University has faced and is a pressing issue that Dewey said he plans to address. Whether it is in the parking lot or in the classroom there is not enough space for students and faculty.

Last fall the University brought in 637 freshmen, for the fall of 2013 the University is targeting a number a little lower.

“We want to stabilize and even bring in a few less students in the fall of 2013,” Shabahang said. “This year we want to target 600. Just ease up a little bit on the numbers in order to better handle and control the quality and the services and education that we offer our students.”

Along with the targeted amount of freshmen the university is also looking to hire 15 full time faculty members.

“We need 15 new offices, which we don’t have,” Dewey said.

“We need to expand office space; we need to expand classroom space,” Dewey said. “We are looking at maybe moving some of our office functions that don’t interact with students, sort of, off of campus to rental sites to free up space on campus that we can then convert to classrooms and to more offices.”

As for parking Dewey says that they are looking to take down some of the structures in the off-campus A lot to free up more parking spaces.

Along with the refurbished Ortmayer Stadium and Vista La Verne, which the university is still paying for, the University also has a $7 million project in the works, Campus West, which will serve as the home for Leopard baseball and softball.

The tuition increase leaves many students scratching their heads.

“I definitely don’t know why it’s still increasing since it increased last year,” junior anthropology major Angelica Alvarez said. “It would be nice to know where it’s going, to have that openness with the students.”

“Nobody has the money,” freshman biology major Kylie Upthegrove said. “It’s already really expensive,” Both Alvarez and Upthegrove are expecting to take out more loans to cover the increase.

Shabahang said she worked very closely with The Associated Students of the University of La Verne, to determine what the tuition increase would be.

“We kind of understand where this tuition increase is coming from,” ASULV president Ava Jahanvash said. “We realize the value that does come out of it. Our goal is to make students understand where this is going. We have to understand that, that tuition goes to everyday expenses and how to run the University.”

“The value of the educational experience for traditional undergraduates is going to be tremendous with these new initiatives,” Shabahang said. “These are investments in the quality of education that we offer and all of that costs money.”